Dissertation - Michael Becker

suffix, and they are allowed to compete in the phonology, with the assumption that choosingone of the allomorphs does not entail the deletion of the other, since only one can bechosen at a time (Mester 1994, Mascaró 1996, Anttila 1997, and many others). Simplypronouncing one of the allomorphs as it is in the UR, then, has no faithfulness cost, andtherefore the choice is left to markedness constraints.Markedness constraints only assess surface forms – in this case, the licensing of anunstressed [o] in the plural stem.These constraints have no access to the underlyingrepresentation of the root, nor to its pronunciation in the singular. It follows, then, thatspeakers are predicted to prefer the choice of –ot no matter whether the singular has an [o]in it or not.This prediction cannot be tested with the real words of Hebrew, since every plural stemthat has an [o] in it also has an [o] in the corresponding singular stem. The prediction can betested, however, with an artificial language that is just like Hebrew, but allows plural stemsthat have [o] in them without a corresponding [o] in the singular. This section describes apair of such artificial languages and how Hebrew speakers learned them.Two languages were taught in this experiment.In both languages, singulars wereplausible native nouns with an [o] or an [i] in their final syllable, and in the correspondingplural forms, [o]’s alternated with [i]’s and vice versa. The choice of the plural suffixagreed with the plural form in the “surface” language and with the singular form in the“deep” language (114). Only final vowels were varied, since they have the strongest effecton plural allomorph selection in real Hebrew.113